


The day my brother lost his scales

by HeleneInTheClouds



Category: Hiccup Series - Cressida Cowell
Genre: Don’t expect too much, Forgive them they are young and do not know their future yet, Gen, Just little things that happened in Hiccup and Furious’s life, Maybe they’ll even meet Grimbeard later on, Slice of Life, Some Fluff, This basically started as a writing exercise for myself, Yes they make a lot of joyful promises they won’t keep, and maybe some angst later on, very short chapters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-12
Updated: 2018-07-12
Packaged: 2019-06-09 07:41:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 6,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15262635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HeleneInTheClouds/pseuds/HeleneInTheClouds
Summary: When Hiccup and Furious were young they lived in a cave with their grimler parents. They knew only dragonese and had never met a human. And most importantly, they did not know the ending of their story.





	1. Prologue

Hiccup loved the wheat field on the hill. To run through it and spread wide his arms as if he wanted to hug the sky, his hand gliding through the yellow strands, watching them bend and snap back at his touch.  
Furious would jog beside him, trampling the grass beneath his claws, swaying the grain with a swish of his long blue tail.

When they had found Furious, their father used to say, he was the same bright blue as Hiccup’s eyes. Furious had loved those eyes when they had first met his. Now, about five years later his colour changed into a deeper radiant blue, but he loved the eyes all the same.

Hiccup jumped, now facing Furious and threw his hands in the air. He laughed. It was a nice laugh (at least according to Furious) and he threw wheat heads into the air. When they came down again they found their way into his similar coloured hair.

Furious noted to himself that it was not his fault this time, should their parents ask about it. He fondly remembered that one time when he tackled his brother to the ground, and he ended up with a head full of wheat. Their mother had spent the entire afternoon picking at Hiccup’s hair until it was time to hunt and their father took over the entire evening. By the time they went to bed some of the wheat had been still there.

Furious raised his claw and hit the stems of some nearby plants and sent them flying over Hiccup’s head.  
One thing Furious did not understand was that whenever they came here the field looked as radiant as ever, without a trace of their previous visits. It was one of the mysteries of the universe that a lone pair of odd brothers couldn’t solve.

Hiccup’s feet touched the grass that grew between the wheat. Another thing that Furious did not understand. Undisturbed by its larger cousin plant, the grass grew bravely, catching sunlight wherever possible, even though it would always stay in the shadow of the wheat.

 _Hiccup is like the wheat,_ he thought. Tall and golden, a child of the sun. Bending and bowing to nature, but never breaking. Always returning to the same glorious fashion after being trampled.

They let themselves fall on their backs and rolled down the hill until the wheat stalks made them halt. Hiccup giggled and Furious smiled back at them.  
The sun slowly set and when they locked eyes they felt like young kings with infinity at their feet.


	2. The first day

There were two days that locked themselves in my brain like the shackles of the forest prison. 

The days in the forest were an endless stream of panic and excitement. The first butterfly I saw scared me half to death and the ominous noises of the creatures of the forest kept me awake at night. Gnawing at the leather straps with my teeth, I remembered that it was useless because I could not fly anyway.   
I ran and ran and ran until my feet couldn’t carry me anymore.   
I found a small stream and my muzzle was just wide enough for me to drink. After all, I had done that before.  
Terrified that I was being followed, I hid each night by covering my blue scales in twigs, mud and leaves. They were still too blue and I knew it.

That’s how they found me.

“Look mother! That dragon cannot fly!” said a pale creature which was a bit smaller than I was at that time. Afraid as I was I did not come out of my hiding place until a large grimler dragon removed the bushes I hid behind.  
The trio stared down at me with large blue eyes.   
“Don’t worry, we’ll help you.” The largest one said. 

And then the pale creature crawled out from underneath the other dragon’s wing. It was tiny, with long limbs and a weeping willow of light yellow strands on the back of its head. Gently, the creature approached me, its hand soft and warm on the scales of my back. Its eyes were large and blue and full of an emotion I would later return in kind. It sat down next to me and with its clever, little, odd shaped paws without claws, undid the leather that bound me.

This was the first day. It was the day I met you.


	3. Story

“Their mother scooped them up in the nick of time as they drifted to the small waterfall. Hanging from her claws they could see the tiny egg tip over the edge. The waterfall was large not steep, but contained many stones that they could have hit their heads on. And now it was the egg that hit those stones.  
Father took Furious from his wife’s arms and both with a son in their grasp they left for home.

“Please don’t ever scare us like that again.” was the first thing their mother said.  
“You are our only children, our two boys. I still remember every part of finding you two.” their father added. And then he told the story again. They had heard it many times before, and yet they would never grow tired of it.  
Their father described to them how little Hiccup had laid in a woven basket with only a little tunic to shelter him from the cold. How he had stretched his hand out to feel the scales on his new mother’s muzzle. And how a small Furious had anxiously wandered the woods until they discovered him in the Northern Forest. They had decided to adopt him then and there. Father and mother had looked at eachother, and they had known. From that day the two were brothers. 

“I get what you tried to do. You were very brave, but also foolish. You could have fallen too and Furious’s wings are not strong enough to carry his body weight.” Father said.  
“I’m sorry.” said both brothers at the same time.  
_But how could you expect us NOT to try to save that egg? There was a young dragon inside of it, a young dragon we could have saved! I think you should always try to save someone, however small the chances may be._ At least, that’s what Hiccup tried to say. He did not get further that ‘but’.  
“We made a big mistake, didn’t we?” Furious asked quickly to shut Hiccup up.

“You’re children. You’re young. You make mistakes, do foolish things, and that’s okay,” Their mother smiled a sorrowful smile, “but the world will be different when you grow up. You will have to hunt and beware of vikings.”  
Furious felt a sudden dread stir inside him.  
“We are here to do that for you now. But we will not always be here.”  
At that, Hiccup ran to his father and hugged him. His father draped his wings around the little boy.  
“We will stay here until then.” he murmured to his father’s scales.  
“We promise.” Furious added.  
“I can’t think of any reason to leave you, mom.” said Hiccup, who had let go of his father.  
And then they snuggled together, all four of them, on a pile of leaves.  
“My little saplings,” their mother whispered, “my little saplings,” and gave each of them a peck on the forehead.


	4. Stars

One day mom and dad went out to visit some friends. Friends whose children were already grown and who now had too many time on their hands.  
They kissed us goodnight and spread their wings.  
“Psst, Furious!” you whispered when they were gone for a while, and we knew for certain they were not coming back because they forgot their present or something.  
“Let me guess,” I started, “you have an idea.”  
You gave me a smirk that meant nothing good, but somehow was impossible to resist. When ‘that’ smirk graced your face I knew I could do nothing but comply.

And that’s how we ended up in the meadow between the Shallow Hill and the Surry Hill, gazing at the sky above.  
There were a few clouds blocking our view, but the stars were as radiant as ever.  
You laid on your stomach picking flower petals. Then you threw them over your shoulder where the wind would catch them and drift them away.  
I folded my wings to my sides.  
“When I am stronger,” I said more to myself that to you, “I will carry you up into the sky, so we can see if the clouds are soft, despite what mother says.”  
It was one of those answers we had wanted to know very badly and which had disappointed us greatly.  
“The clouds are like mist,” mother had said, “you cannot feel them.”

You turned around to lay on your back.  
“What do you think the stars are made of?”  
“I don’t know Furious.”  
“I once heard someone say that they are the reflection of the moon on the gemstones that float in the sky. And when the sun comes up, the sun shines so bright that no one notices the floating gems.”  
“The sky is _not_ filled with gems.” you scoffed.  
“The earth is filled with them. So why not the sky?”  
You did not know.  
I laid my head on your stomach. And then you traced swirly patterns on my cheek.

We were silent for a long time. It was a comforting sort of silence, the kind you only shared with someone you really loved. Maybe we both thought about the many enigmas that the sky contained.  
Sometime later, when my wings became strong enough to carry our weight, we flew at high as we dared, trying to get close to the stars to see if we would find floating gems.  
We didn’t. You passed out and then I returned to earth, panic-stricken and filled with guilt until you came around again.  
“Let’s not do that again.” You would say.  
And we wouldn’t.

Eventually I stood up and you understood why. It was time to go back home.  
We returned to the woods and followed the Path Of Oak Trees to our home.  
You yawned and that made me yawn too. The moment you closed your eyes you were gone, flying to your dreams.  
I laid down on the large bed of leaves. I could still feel the swirly patterns of your finger on my cheek.


	5. Fruit

Furious usually caught Hiccup when the boy fell out of a tree. Which was often, so Furious got very good at catching.

“Just a little higher...” Hiccup mused while he climbed another branch of the tree.  
“Are you sure Hiccup? You are pretty high already...” Furious shouted upwards to the rustling leaves.  
“There are some ripe ones right there. I can almost touch them!” Hiccup shouted back.  
 _Almost could still make you plummet,_ Furious thought.  
“You worry too mu-“   
Furious resisted rolling his eyes. With an “AAAARRGH!” of resentment Hiccup came back down to earth.  
He let out an “oof!” as the impact of complying with gravity hit his stomach.  
Hiccup landed perfectly on Furious’s back, with his arms hanging on one side of Furious’s body and his legs on the other. He rolled down Furious’s spine and ended up on the ground, draped over Furious’s tail.  
“That apple can’t be worth the trouble.” Furious remarked. He turned his body around and when his tail moved Hiccup rolled around another time.  
“Come on Furious! I’m not hurt and the apples from this side of the forest are delicious.” Hiccup replied while lying on his back in the dirt.  
Furious swatted an apple in Hiccup’s direction with his tail. “Catch.”  
Hiccup caught it in two hands and took a bite.   
“I gotta say,” he said with his mouth full, “you’re getting increasingly careful.”  
“Well, don’t you remember that time when you bruised your ribs and breathing hurt for at least two weeks?”  
“Once, Furious! Once!”  
“Picking fruit is more dangerous than hunting.”  
“Why? Fruit doesn’t run OR hide. And it doesn’t fight back either.”  
Furious tilted his head and gave Hiccup a look.  
“Okay, okay! Let’s go to the peach tree. That one is easy.”

The peach tree was indeed smaller, with thicker branches and lower hanging fruit. Hiccup would climb on Furious’s back and standing there, on his shoulders, he could pick the best peaches and let them roll down Furious’s back where they would form a nice pile at the tip of his tail.  
When Furious got a little tired Hiccup would sit down on a large branch and throw the peaches down.   
Furious caught them gently in his jaws. Sea dragons could be gentle. Even with their teeth they knew how to hold things without damaging them. 

Furious liked picking fruit. It was a peaceful activity they could do together in the morning sun. He liked watching his older brother skirt around a tree, undoing the fruit from their twigs with his clever human fingers. Sometimes he wished his claws were that delicate too.  
He wished he was a little more like Hiccup in general.   
Hiccup had a certain air of joyful carelessness about him that had made Furious pause on numerous occasions. On those occasions he would observe his older brother and question how he ended up so lucky.

They were slow learners, and their learning process involved a lot of bruises and smashed fruit, but they learned.   
Furious would fly with Hiccup on his back, so close to the tree that his brother could step on a branch.  
And so the little boy would climb around, throwing down fruit for Furious to catch and rustling leaves in the process.


	6. Whispers

They thought I couldn’t hear their forked tongues hiss their gossip. _Sea dragon’s eyes are sensitive, idiots!_ I thought.  
Odd was the word used most often. Your little ears never heard them, however, and I thought that was a good thing. You would have asked mom and dad about it and that would have caused some uncomfortable conversations with the other parents.

“What do you think Brightroar?” said a young breathquencher to her savager friend.  
“How should I know? MY mother taught me well, and even I don’t know how to catch a deer.”  
“Oh look.” said the breathquencher, whose name was Screech, “there we have the seadragonus giganticus maximus named Furious and...”  
“Hiccup. The human.” you said. Oh gods, I wanted to hit your face so badly. Well, no. I did not want to hit you. Maybe just a little nudge.  
Brightroar snickered.   
_Snake,_ I thought.  
Hiccup means ‘mistake’. What idiots your parents must have been to name you ‘mistake’. Or perhaps they spoke a different language, one where Hiccup meant something else entirely.  
Only later I would find out how you got your name. I would also find out that was not the worst thing about your parents. However, I was young. And foolish.  
“Riiiight...” Screech mused, “And are you good enough at hunting to catch a deer? They’re so very fast!”  
“We don’t know. We haven’t tried.” I said. Which wasn’t entirely true, to be honest. You and I had tried a few times, but telling those two we failed was the wrong answer and telling them we had succeeded was the wrong answer too.  
“You’re large Furious. Doesn’t that scare the deer so much that it freezes?” Screech continued.  
“That’s not how it works.” You said in the most deadpan voice ever.  
It was true. I was a large dragon for my age. And the truth is, whenever you and I went out hunting my size didn’t make us very stealthy.

The one time we did hunt deer was by accident.  
We had stumbled upon a grazing trio of brown, long-legged animals with antlers in a small forest clearing. No, only two had antlers. The little one had been too young for that.   
You had looked at me in a way that had been a question.  
Yes. I nodded. We had slowly crept up behind them and you had counted on your fingers until we pounced.  
 _You first,_ you had gestured. I tried to move as silently as possible, but the sheer size of my blue body had rustled some leaves and the deer had run along.  
“That went well.” I had said sarcastically when we sat in the middle of the clearing. It made you laugh.  
“I wish I had talons.” You had said after a while. “I am small and pretty fast, but as soon as I get close to the prey I cannot kill it.”  
“You have nails though.” I had replied.  
“But they are not very useful.”  
“No. They are not very useful.”

Besides Screech and Brightroar, a lot of dragons would speak about us when we were supposedly out of earshot.   
A nest of monstrous nightmares once wondered what had made our parents adopt us.   
_Love,_ I thought, every time.  
Once, when all the young dragons gathered at the Meeting Clearing, a young Nadder had walked up to us and asked if we knew our ‘real’ parents.  
Not once in my life had I thought about having other parents. I knew that we were adopted of course (we were not grimler dragons after all), but never had I thought of mom and dad as unreal parents.  
We had looked at eachother, and we had silently agreed that it was a rude question. I did not know what to answer, stunned as I was by the cheek of that nadder.  
You were not stunned. You would never be stunned. Whatever would happen, you always had a clever answer ready.  
“Yes.” You had said. “Of course we know our real parents. They live right through the Path Of Oak Trees in the cave near the Fast Stream.”  
“But that’s where the grimler dragons live...” the nadder had managed to say before it dawned on him that you meant our grimler parents.  
“Oh.”  
You had smirked and the nadder cleared off.

Later that day, while mom and dad were out hunting and we sat by the fire we spoke about it.  
“Do you ever think about your sea dragon parents?” You had asked.  
I had shaken my head in response.  
“Thoughts about them? Yes. Wanting to do anything with those thoughts? No.”  
“Agreed.”  
“Sometimes,” I had said, “I am curious about who they are. But then again, I have mom and dad. And you. I have my life, and it is busy enough without some unknown sea dragons.”  
“Yes,” you had stared into the flames of our little fire, “I have parents. I love them. And they love us. Why would I want it any other way?”

We said goodbye to Screech and Brightroar.  
Mom and dad were already home from their hunt, ironically with a deer.  
Mom sliced out small pieces of meat and with a little flame dad made them edible.  
While we ate our grilled meat with some fruit that we had picked the other day I thought about what we said during our conversation about parents.  
 _Parents are the ones that teach you how to hunt. That comfort you when you have had a bad dream. Who patiently pluck the wheat heads out of your messy hair,_ I had thought. And it was true. No parent could have measured up to mom and dad. Not my sea dragon parents that had once left my egg for That One to find. And definitely not the father that would someday come to claim you.


	7. Nightmare

Furious had never said it out loud, yet Hiccup somehow felt he liked the feeling of Hiccup’s hands on his claws.  
They always slept snuggled together. They did not know whose idea it was, and they did not care.  
There was something comforting about that tiny human hand on his blue scales.

At night, he would often dream of That One. Of the table with the traps. Hos dreams were vague, and yet they made his eyes shoot open at the strangest of times. Then he would look around to find his brother next to him and that would calm him enough to dare close his eyes again.  
He would sum up all the lovely things they had done and all the things they were going to do while Hiccup’s hand rested on his claw.  
In the end he would fall asleep again.

_The thing with nightmares is that they’re so difficult to understand. They are fake,_ Furious thought, _whatever frightens you is not truly there and yet, when you look around in the darkness, it creeps closer. Another thing about them is that eventually you come to believe they will never fade. That thing that makes your eyes flutter open returns every so often that you think you’ll never get rid of them._

A third factor, one that hindered Furious, was that he did not want to bother anyone else with them. Mother would worry and Father would find sleepyherbs. And hiccup... Hiccup would whisper him to sleep.  
Furious wasn’t entirely opposed to that, but he could not make Hiccup stay awake for him. Which was why he would be careful not to wake him after a nightmare. He just held his hand.

Lately he would lay in silence and softly squeeze his brother’s hand. Very softly, so he would not wake. And it helped. For some reason the presence of his human brother, and maybe his parents too, made him forget about the table. The memories became vague, the dreams even more vague. Until nothing concrete happened anymore and Furious wondered why he still woke up.  
He might even have believed the recurring nightmare began to fade.


	8. Wings

I remember how you wanted to give me a high five when I was first able to fly. I also remember how I once knocked you over. My wings had gotten stronger, as did the rest of me.  
Mom flew with me the first time, while you and dad stood on the ground and waved at us.   
I accidentally hit a tree while looking at you. It is not something I am proud of.

Ever since you had begged me to keep practising, so I could one day carry you up to the stars. Back then we still wondered what clouds felt like. And if there were really gemstones drifting about in the night.  
So I practiced and practiced. And failed and practiced again.   
You were a wingless creature, and yet, throughout our lives, you always managed to come up with unique, original and a little bit crazy ideas to spend the day with. Showing you the sky was the least I could do in return.

But that wasn’t it, I realise now. It was that ever-present desire to be as great as you. You were brave and cunning and wise and I wished, longed to be, maybe half as magnificent as you. You were the wheat in our favourite field. Tall and proud. And I was the grass looking up to you.

The day I dared to try to take you, mom and dad flew with us. “Just to be sure,” they said.  
However, that was not necessary. My wings had grown strong and spanned a length almost as long as that of our father.  
You climbed on my back and held on to my spines as we took to the sky. The air was breezy and you whooped with joy when we flew over the trees that had seemed to high standing next to them on the ground.

To feel the air gush around me and to hear the rhythmic flap of my wings was a sound I would never grow tired of. Flying was freedom. Adventure. The feeling of having to answer to no one.   
You would tell me later that every time I took a sprint and you were blown back by the speed, your heart skipped a beat. And that every time I released us from the thudding of my claws on the ground felt like a release.  
You also loved storms, and because I was a rather large and sturdy dragon, I did not mind flying through them. “The way we move up and down and shake at the touch of the wind,” you would say, “to hear the slight rumbling, is beautiful.” Your favourite was an unexpected, shaky drop in altitude.  
You were the only one to think that. Never would I hear someone say the same thing.

Now that my wings are bound again, I can only twitch them a little, I dream of flying often. Many times do I think of the days with only you on my back and an infinite sky around us.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ironically, I wrote this during the takeoff of a Really Long Flight, so these descriptions are a little more lifelike than I would want to admit.


	9. Rain

It was a rather stormy day, with rain that came pouring down like someone in the sky turned a barrel upside down. To top it all off, there was a faint rumble to be heard that might or might not have indicated a thunderstorm.  
“Shall we go outside?” Hiccup asked.  
“Why?”   
“Because I feel like it. There is something beautiful about a storm like this.”  
Beautiful was not the word Furious would have picked, even though he agreed. Furious found a storm rather calming, the way the raindrops fell on his skin, yet he did not know why. _How,_ he thought, _can something that destructive ease the mind the way it does?_  
“Come on!” Hiccup said.  
Before Furious could protest, Hiccup ran out of the cave into the storm.  
They ran through the rain and their feet made muddy footprints in the sand. Little ones with toes for Hiccup and large ones with claws for Furious.  
They exited the woods on the west and ended up on the Surry Hill.  
“Oh Gods!” Hiccup cried, “It’s SO cold!” The drops of rain that sizzled on their warm bodies were indeed cold.  
Furious laughed.   
Hiccup laughed too.  
“We’re crazy.”   
“Yes.”  
Hiccup rolled down the Surry Hill and whooped with joy. When he stopped and sat up, little blades of grass graced his hair. Furious found it a funny sight, those green specks in his brother’s mane.  
Furious chuckled. “Good luck explaining that to mom and dad!”  
“Oh shush you.”  
They wandered back into the woods and managed to find enough dry wood for a little fire. Furious lit it with a little blow.

They caught a couple of fish in the Clear Pond in the forest and roasted them. (Or rather, Hiccup put the fish on a small branch and held them above the fire while Furious breathed some extra fire on it, scorching the branch and letting the fish fall into the fire.) Furious wondered while dragons had not evolved with claws as fine as human fingers. Fingers were useful for precision tasks suck as removing the spine from the fish or picking your teeth in case you did eat part of said spine.  
Under the shelter of Furious’s large blue wing Hiccup held a roasted fish and took little bites of it. Furious studied him.

The rain still streamed down Hiccup’s face despite the wing, and separate drops were caught in his eyelashes. Why didn’t dragons have eyelashes?  
At moments like these, Furious’s love for his brother hit him in the stomach. Humans were odd little creatures according to most wild dragons, but the way the raindrops fell off Hiccup’s eyelashes, the way his long wheat coloured hair draped itself around his back... Furious could see the elegance of it. It was a sort of wild, unkempt beauty that mesmerized him. Hiccup was what humans would call ‘feral’, but perhaps that was what Furious liked so much about him. Furious loved his brother, and at times like this he could not imagine a feeling stronger than that.

Hiccup finally finished his fish. (Okay, perhaps one negative thing about humans was how slow they were. It was part of their finery, Furious supposed.)  
They stood up and took a stroll through the forest.  
“Do you think mom will ever call us anything else but saplings?”  
“Are you actually asking if she will ever call us trees?” Hiccup smirked.  
He hopped from one foot onto the other and swayed his arms like wings.  
“That sounds stupid.”  
“Yes.”  
“Perhaps she hopes we will always stay young and happy. Bendy and green, like the little trees she compares us with.”  
“Don’t all parents wish their children stay young and happy?” Hiccup wondered. “I don’t know any set of parents that was ever happy when their children left the nest.”  
“Indeed. The parents of those tonguetwisters were very sad weren’t they?” 

Furious remembered when those parents had visited his. The tonguetwister mother had cried. “Oh Fereal, you are lucky to have such young children.” She had spoken to his mother.  
“I have waited for them a long time, dear.” his mother had answered.  
That was the thing with Furious and Hiccup’s parents: After multiple eggs that did not survive childhood, they got older, and almost accepted that they would not have children. Furious faintly remembered that their last Egg Child had died the day they had found Hiccup. He heard it in one of the versions of The Story. All of their friends already had children, and now, when Hiccup and Furious were young, all of their friends’ children left the nest.

“Our parents will be devastated when we leave,” Furious said, “they wished for children so hard...”  
“That’s why they’re a little overprotective.”   
“Yes. But that’s okay. They love us, perhaps even more because they wished for us so much.”  
“Isn’t that always so? That you appreciate something more when you had trouble getting it?”  
“Are we an ‘it’ now?” Hiccup laughed.  
That made Furious laugh too. “I for one will never leave mom and dad for too long. When I grow up I will still visit them.”  
“Yeah. Me too.”

Furious was glad to have his grimler parents. He was almost happy that his egg was found by That One. Whoever his mom and dad were before he was abandoned, Furious would not want to trade them back.  
He asked Hiccup what he thought about the subject, and Furious was happy to know that he agreed.   
When they came home their father tsk’d at their wet bodies and their mother tsk’d at all the grass in Hiccup’s hair. It was like the wheat all over again, except that the grass was way smaller. While their mother sat both of them down next to the fire to warm them up and started working on Hiccup’s hair, their father patted them down to check if they were not too cold.  
No. They would not trade their parents for anyone, a little overprotective they might be, no other could claim their parenthood.


	10. Chapter 10

There were days   
when each hour   
was a war I fought to survive  
There were nights   
full of nightmares   
and I dreaded closing my eyes  
There were skies   
that burst open   
with a downpour to drown me alive  
But the world took a spark like a match in the dark   
and the fire brought me to life

_Hiccup was like a fire,_ Furious thought. Backlit by the moonlight on their first meeting he had seemed to glow. And he still did. Hiccup was a fire in the darkness. His fire.


	11. Tunic

It was a hot summer day when Hiccup and Furious decided to go swimming.   
The Clear Pond was a small swimming place that lay very close to their home and that was, luckily, still undiscovered by the rest of the young dragons.  
“One of the reasons I wish I was a dragon, besides the whole flying, is that dragon’s don’t need clothes to keep themselves warm.”  
“Yes. But when it’s hot like today, we can’t shed our skin.”  
Hmm. That was quite a good argument.  
Furious waded into the Clear Pond until only his shoulders and head were above the water.  
Hiccup took off his tunic, the ragged old thing, and jumped in as well.  
Furious reminded himself that he should get Hiccup a new one.  
The brown garment he just slipped out of was ragged on all sides with one sleeve almost detached, so that his shoulder was poking out. The only thing that held them together were some rough stitches which were undoubtedly as old as the rest of the thing.  
“It’s cold!” Hiccup shivered.  
“That’s because the sun did not shine yesterday.”  
“And because I do not have thick scales.”  
“Yes. And that.”

Hiccup swam around to get warmer. Through the water Furious could make out the faint lines on Hiccup’s side. Three claw marks. From a wrestling accident.  
Their mother had been worried and kept Hiccup in the cave until it was well healed. Which was, to his luck, very soon because their father had gathered all sorts of herbs and flowers.   
Furious had stayed in the cave too, guilt-ridden as he had been.  
There were still three scratches in the tunic to remind them of it, much to Furious’s dismay.

After swimming a few circles Hiccup splashed Furious’s head with the greatest amount of water his human arms could move.  
That was a mistake.  
Furious returned the gesture in kind and within a minute Hiccup’s hair was soaking wet and clinging to his body.  
Hiccup moved the hair out of his face and laughed.  
Then he dived underwater and jumped on Furious’s back from behind.  
“Gotcha!”  
Furious then turned round and round to shake the little boy off. Hiccup fell back into the water with a splash that made Furious chuckle.

They spent the afternoon on the bedding. Pale little Hiccup might even have gotten a bit of a tan.  
Hiccup wriggled himself back in his tunic, once misplacing his arm because there was a hole in one elbow.

Hiccup did get a new tunic that evening. Mother had stumbled upon an empty viking camp while hunting and had nicked a red one off the laundry line. While she was there, she had also stolen some of the viking’s fish.  
So now Hiccup was roasting fish in his brand-new-second-hand piece of clothing.  
The joy did not last long. The garment was heavy and hot and a little stiff from the seawater that had graced it not too long ago.  
Before they went to bed Hiccup changed back into his old one.  
While Furious and Hiccup slept together, their mother returned the tunic to the laundry line.  
The next morning the lucky owner would find it at the exact same spot they had left it the previous morning. It had magically wandered off one evening and returned all on its own. How odd.

Furious dreamed that night. _Perhaps it was symbolic,_ his dreams told him. _Changes were not always a good thing. Changes could wear heavy on the heart if they meant losing something beloved that was there before the change. Their life was a beloved thing. Their cave home behind the Path Of Oak Trees. The Fast Stream where they would get their clear drinking water. The Meeting Clearing where they met other young dragons. The Clear Pond and the meadow between the two hills._  
Furious did not want that to change. And Hiccup could keep his tunic if that meant everything would stay the same.


	12. Fight

“Are you that angry with me?” Your voice was casual, like it did not just happen.  
I could not pretend anymore. All the anger that had built inside of me was let out in a rage of fury that was befitting of my name.  
“You absolute fool!” I shouted, “You just...”  
For some reason I could not say it.  
“WE just....”  
I let out something between a roar and a cry.  
“Aaargh!”  
I turned around.  
_Don’t cry. Don’t cry._  
But I felt a lot like crying, actually.  
“It was an accident, Furious! I swear on...”  
“Oh shut it!” I snapped, “It is done and there is nothing you can do about it!”  
I did cry.  
“Why would I forgive you, you...” I spat, “You HUMAN!”  
And at that moment I really believed it. I thought of the days on that dreadful table and how it had been a human that put me there. It was the most horrid word I could think of.  
I would regret it later, of course I would. I could never stay mad at you.  
You moved closer like you wanted to kiss my tears away, and after my anger subsided a little later, I so wished you had. However, the insult kept you at bay. You said nothing and I ran away.

You were already home when I arrived at the cave. Father and you were taking out twigs and dried leaves that had swept into our home.  
We acted as if nothing happened, and if thunderstruck, our cave had been caught in the storm and was such a mess that dad did not ask questions. When mom came home with food she did not ask either. I did not know if that relieved me or not. The waiting and the silence worked like acid on my stomach.  
I mean, how could they not ask? After everything? And how could they not notice us desperately attempting to act normal?  
We never fought. We just weren’t that kind of siblings I suppose.  
Except for that day. What happened that day did not truely count. And yet it hung between us like a storm cloud. We never spoke about that day.  
You slept on the other side of the cave that night.

I was still angry the next day. And the day after that. And the day after that.  
Whatever you did spending those days, I did not want to know. You were hunting deer for all I cared.  
At least that was what I told myself to keep something else away. Slowly, the anger had turned into that something else. Something that I could not place, but pressed on my shoulders like stones.  
I found you next to the stream near the Meeting Clearing. You just sat there, snapping twigs and pulling leaves of flowers. I sat down next to you.

“Look at us. Two murderers.” I said.  
You looked at me for a while with ‘that’ smirk, and we both chuckled.  
“I could never kill a sentient creature.” It was something I hadn’t thought about before but when I spoke the words the truth of them hit me in the face.  
“No?”  
“No.”  
“Me neither.”  
And then you laid your head on my shoulder. A thousand rocks fell from my shoulders. My world was right again, or so it felt. I pressed the acid in my conscience away. You mattered more. You would always matter more.  
“To end something living. Breathing. Feeling.” You shook your head. “No.” You paused.  
“We all make mistakes. We all need second, third and fourth chances. But there is poetry in everyone, and I don’t believe there is anything cruel enough to warrant murder.”  
I did not answer. I could not kill, but I believed there were a few acts cruel enough to warrant murder. My thoughts went to That One and I could imagine myself murdering her. I could imagine it very well.  
And then we sat there, watching the water.


End file.
